


Part One: "You couldn't help out your own neighbour."

by Anihan (Nakagami)



Series: Jim and John, and Moran watches on. [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drugged John, Harm to Children, Jim's a sick fuck, Moran feels guilty, Other, People?, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice People, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:06:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakagami/pseuds/Anihan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title and chapter headings from Matt Corby's song Brother. Part one of three. </p><p>It isn't the drugging of a little girl that makes Moran nervous. No, it's the way Jim wakes her up afterward that puts the sniper on edge. This is honestly the first time that Jim's ever hurt her and, somehow, that makes the day so much worse.<br/> </p><p>Please read the tags if you're worried. No character death, no permanent injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Part One: "You couldn't help out your own neighbour."

 ¥

The air smells a bit like blood, none of it fresh. Thunder, lightning, rinse and repeat. Even the lights are flickering in time with the ebb and flow of the storm reigning outside. If Moran were a betting man, a bet would have been placed on _“everything being not all right.”_

The scene is set like a horror novel on purpose, of course. Jim does so love an audience.

But here it is, a scene for your nightmares to envy. All your fears have come to life as a silhouette in the doorway, armed to the gills. The second man has just finished teasing a knife from its sheath on the bed in the center of the room. The newly sharpened edge catches, tears the fabric of a pillowcase; and yet the pillow’s inhabitant, a small girl, doesn’t move away.

One hand spans the distance between the two bodies on the bed, the palm rough with effort, not afraid of work in the field. Not afraid of getting dirty.

Not afraid of The Work being dirty.

It settles on the duvet and curls around the fabric, bringing the blanket slowly toward the foot of the bed to reveal the body lying motionless underneath. A shiver thrums through the girl at the revelation, an autonomic reaction to the change in temperature, but then the flesh settles again, immobile.

"She is young," Moran states. It is half caution, half reminder, and Jim smiles at the thought.

"Barely older than the first time," he agrees, but he doesn't specify what it was "the first time" for. They both already know.

Johann doesn't. She sleeps the slumber of the unwillingly medicated, characterized by the stillness of the dead. Jim’s hand returns to her shoulder the moment the duvet hits the ground. She doesn’t even stir.

And then Jim begins to sing.

"Come to me, children, and follow my way,” he chants, and Moran snorts and turns away.

The sound draws Jim's gaze, and his eyes crawl up the soldier’s body and focus on Moran’s amused countenance with a willing grin, cheerful and unfeigned. He's happy this way, authentic. He continues singing, soothed by his singular audience’s attention.

Moran tries not to be perturbed but Jim just _stares_. He doesn’t take his eye off the sniper, _his_ sniper, but the assassin is too well trained to take the bait and comment on it. There is a vague memory of the lyrics lingering in Moran's brain from some long-repressed night at a rave that Jim had, of course, "required" his sniper's presence at, but all Moran remembers of the night was that it was a bad idea. Even the memory of the epic hangover the next day is more vivid.

_That music, what was it, trance? Techno? And now the bloody maniac has managed to turn it into some sort of macabre reverse lullaby. Lovely._ Moran glances at the bed, something sick growing in the base of a war-tempered stomach. It is no hardship to look away.

Jim chuckles at the sniper's antics. If he intends to wake the girl up, the efforts are largely failing. Her limbs tremble but the hands folded restfully against her chest are still, and her eyelids don’t even flutter.

“Feeling unwell, Moran?” Jim asks. He doesn’t even have to look over now, he's doing it just because he wants to watch. “John’s a bit under the weather too. Poor dolls," he mocks, and there's no doubt that he does think of them as dolls. "Perhaps you’ve both caught something?”

“Like what, a conscience?”

Quiet falls. Jim’s singing voice is conspicuously... absent.

“Well,” he asks after a moment, drawing out the vowel sound. He sounds delightedly scandalized. _“Have_ you?”

The aforementioned sniper doesn't fidget, but that's more due to training than any real design. The sight of the boss serenading a sleeping preteen was disturbing, alright, but something is different about passively standing by as she is moulded into a plaything right in front of their eyes. And there's no good way to say that aloud.

There’s a line to be crossed, and Moran doesn’t know when or where it was left behind. Or how to go back to the other side.

Shuffling bare feet against the carpet, Moran shrugs noncommittally. “Murder, sure, death is my business. But torture? Is this truly necessary?”

For a moment, Jim looks honestly hurt. Then it becomes a fake caricature of the same sentiment, both hands pressed prissily to his chest. “Did you just insult my singing?”

“No, it’s fucking gorgeous and you know it,” Moran snaps and pushes off of the door frame, taking a single step into the room. Just one step. “I’m referring to the drugging and kidnapping, remember? Not to mention you going all hocus pocus on her, cursing her while she fucking _sleeps_." 

Jim huffs. They're both quiet for a moment, and then Moran's teeth snap shut. "All it does is make me feel sorry for the gal,” the sniper says in a purposefully even tone.

“You shouldn’t,” Jim giggles. The sound is disproportional to the mirth which is disproportional to the situation. It's all wrong somehow, all of it. “I have done so much worse to you.”

One breath goes in, one breath comes out, and then another each way for good measure. “...I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Jim just laughs again.

At least Johann seems to be waking up now. Her limbs are restless on the bed; her face, mobile. She rolls away onto her side and Jim crowds up right behind her, the flat of the knife under his cheek, hands balanced on her shoulders to keep her from moving too far. She doesn't struggle, although Moran doesn't know why anyone would have had hoped that she would.

He leans in and, continuing the words of the creepy song, breathes devotion into her skin. "With all my power, I'll show you the way," he promises, and wasn't that a terrifying thought?

A lesser man would baulk at the task, but Moran isn't a lesser man. The scene is observed critically without a hint of judgement passing over the face of the trained killer. It is a relief to the watchers, at least, when the little girl reaches consciousness at last. She hadn't actually curtailed her natural penchant for startling - badly - every time she was forcefully woken, so the ringing of Jim's voice in her ears did little to stop her from jerking bodily into consciousness without an ounce of grace, limbs askew.

And then flailing right out of bed and onto the floor in a mess.

"Jim!" she shrieks from the floor.

Her heart is on display, utterly terrified and more than a little annoyed, and Moran's speeds up to a normal pace at last, the dread draining away. She seems to be fine. The killer intentionally makes a noise to catch her attention and Johann's eyes snap over to the door frame.

"Oh," she says. Her expression stutters and closes off. "Moran," she greets woodenly without meeting any eyes.

"Hello, little bit," Moran replies.

The little girl shivers again. "Jim," she repeats, turning away from the door to look back at him. He is staring down at her from the mountain of pillows on the bed with a look that is more than half amusement. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought we might go out for lunch," he chirps.

If she is surprised, the girl doesn't show it. Her pulse is visible at her throat. It races. "If you're trying to provoke an escape attempt, it won't work. You know me. I'm especially well-trained."

An ungraceful snort screws up Jim's serene expression. "Oh, yes. Nineteen days kept comfortable and well-fed in a furnished and supplied flat of your own is enough to break the will of the illustrious John Hamish Watson. It must be so _hard_ to be taken care of: You couldn’t even last a month!" His voice falls out of a falsetto. "How quaint."

There’s an audible click as Johann’s mouth snaps shut. They all know it has been longer than three weeks. After a moment of deliberation, she doesn't question him on it. "There wasn't much of me left to break anyhow, after six months on the run with a _trained_ assassin," Johann retorts, and rolls her eyes to reinforce the impression of a sullen teenager. She says it as if there’s something especially wrong about being trained in the art of killing, something worse than being an untrained assassin. Moran laughs and perks up at that.

“Something wrong with that, little bit? Or does killing because you’re naturally talented at it sound better to you?”

Johann doesn’t answer. She stands and straightens her night clothes, smooths the simple white shift and remains quite visibly unperturbed. This is despite the way her insides are roiling, clenching and rebelling at the very thought of this whole situation, and her limbs keep twitching as the sudden adrenaline combats the lingering drug in her system. There can be no winner here, she knows.

“It doesn’t take talent to kill,” she says at last, but she doesn't meet anyone's eyes when she says it.

Jim hums noncommittally, then interrupts their little exchange for a return to the previous conversation. "Did your sister tell you that?"

The casual, just-a-shade-away-from-friendly way he mentions her family... it makes Johann stiffen up and stand, for once, stock-still at the side of the bed. He meets her eyes with a rueful little smile, and then his gaze settles deliberately on the hands clenched at her sides.

The left hand doesn’t shake. It doesn’t even quiver. The right one does. Her whole body is shaking from the adrenaline rush so the presence of one still limb is most telling. Jim makes another thoughtful noise of amusement, quickly followed by a sound of satisfied curiosity as Johann hides both hands behind her back.

"Because I can assure you, John. It isn't true." He pauses, lowers his voice as if in warning, although the effect mostly just makes him seem needlessly dramatic. "There’s still plenty of you able to be broken."

A wave of fear-hate-anger wracks though her frame. It's a near thing but, somehow, Johann doesn't put sound to her despair. She shifts from one foot to the other, moderates her breathing until it is calm and even once more, and ignores the violence that threatens beneath her skin. "If I'm going to be up," she whispers slowly, "I am going to put my slippers on."

She does so, any layer of protection being more than welcome, and then does up the laces. Ballet slippers, silken and dainty, with ribbons that travel all the way up her calves to be tied on the outside just below each knee, worn instead of something practical like, oh, _actual_ house slippers. Something heavy falls from Johann’s person in the process, and even while crouched on the floor the gun makes a clatter when it hits the ground and bounces, glancing off the armoire.

Instead of picking it up, Johann stares at it. A SIG Sauer, military issue. A gift.

She clears her throat. "I don't have a sister."

“No,” Jim disagrees. He’s smiling over at Moran when Johann looks up to check, and a quick glance reveals that the soldier is still refusing to look back.

Jim slips out of the bed and kneels at Johann’s side, and Moran’s eyes are on him the second he moves. Jim draws her in slowly, coaxing her close with both hands in her shoulders, and she falls forward to her knees in front of him, allowing him to bring her in. He pulls her against the length of his body in a slow embrace, and she lets him guide her forehead until it rests on his collarbone. He smells expensive, and a bit like sweat. His expression is so forcibly cheerful, his smile, so joyous in the extreme, that it makes her cringe away. She buries her face in his shoulder.

Her body begins to still again in his grasp, the shaking fading to shivers, the shivers to intermittent trembles. Jim notices and smiles, pulls her frame even tighter against his chest, and kisses her hairline twice.

He pulls back and kisses her cheek next and says, again, “No, my little one. You didn’t have a sister before, did you, but you do now. Moran?”

The last word brings the sniper to attention. _This must be the purpose of having an assassin in the bedroom of a tween,_ Moran thinks. Silent stride, unobtrusive demeanor, and the ability to carry a folder of film strips - taken by an antique camera, handled inexpertly by an irreverent killer - and offer it to the duo on the bedroom floor. _Kills, babysits, and does amateur photography. Jack of all trades._

The girl gives a small smile, and Moran returns it despite the guilt that threatens. Jim’s smiling too. He removes one strip of six photos and hands it to Johann, one arm still around her shoulders so that he can look at the images with her.

In the first picture there is a person, a woman in her mid-twenties. She looks hungover, and Johann quickly realizes that that is a pattern. The focus of the photoshoot was a dirty blonde, blue-eyed and of Watson-ish facial features. It doesn’t take Johann a second glance to realize that it truly is her brother - sister? - although the gender doesn’t matter so much. Johann goes through the film greedily, treasuring every image, because truly, there was no doubt. It was Henry.

“Harry,” Moran corrects, and both other occupants of the room glare at the interruption. “She calls herself Harry. Harriet.”

Johann nods absently and continues to look through the film. There’s a small series, at least a month’s worth of footage in the folder. A full week and a half shows the woman passed-out drunk in the streets by Montague Street, and still Johann stares at her with reverence.

A thought occurs - a rare one, the sort of assumption that is correct on the first try. This is the type that should absolutely, at all costs, _never_ be spoken aloud - and yet the thought lights Johann up from the inside out. Excitement thrums once, twice, and then a third time through her veins, and then the pieces click into place at last.

“John,” she says suddenly, and Moran’s heart sinks even as Jim’s face blanks out. This should have been a warning to her but Johann doesn’t take notice. She’s staring at the woman in the picture. “It’s John’s sister, isn’t it? The John from this world, the John Watson you want me to replace. It’s _his_ sister.”

Moran’s whispered hiss of, _“For fuck’s sake!”_ is all the warning Johann receives that she had made a mistake. Johann looks up quickly but Jim's face is flat. Cold. There's no reaction to read. 

There is hardly a moment between the turning point. First there was Jim-with-an-arm-around-you, holding-you-warm-and-close, and then there was Jim-shoving-your-face-into-the-carpet. Actually, there _isn’t_ a full moment. The transition between upright and face down on the floor is so fast that Johann’s body falters, spasms, chokes on air going _out_ of her lungs.

And her left _fucking_ hand _still_ doesn’t _shake._ Not a tremble. Not even a twitch.  

“Tell me when you can’t breathe,” Jim says conversationally. His other hand comes up to wrap around her neck gently. The fingers exert just enough pressure to restrict her oxygen flow.

Johann doesn't panic. She still has enough air to talk, apparently, which is good enough news. "How considerate," she begins, and flinches when Jim's hand tightens. She goes on regardless. "Even blind with fury, you stay away from my carotids. Blood flow is more important than oxygen flow, as you know." Her sentences become shorter, a bit more difficult to force out, but delivered with the same even tone. "So you want my brain to be healthy. Undamaged. Why is that, I wonder. Jim?"

Moran almost laughs at that. There's really no other response because Johann _is_ laughing at that, wasting her last puffs of breath on a demented sense of humor, and no one has ever said that Moran wasn’t equally as demented.

Jim tries not to join them because threats sound so much less epic when they’re chortled as opposed to hissed. He manages a straight face and completes his sentence as, “Because I’d really like to know when it is safe for me to let go.”  

Moran snaps. "Not that it is ever _unsafe_ for you to let go, but let's just pretend that anything you do makes sense," the sniper growls sarcastically.

It’s only just become unsafe for Johann if he _doesn’t_ let go, not that he shows a sign of stopping. The girl has already gone still, breath slow and even with her eyes rolled back, although that part seems to be faked. 

Actually, no. It all seems faked. _Is she playing dead?_

Moran marvels at the thought.

Jim shakes a little in his anger, teeth grit like a terrier, mimes holding Johann between his canines until she - apparently as a snake, according to the one-handed gesture - falls into death throes. He holds her on the floor until Moran’s jaw unclenches and a hiss escapes between the abused teeth.

“And then what?” Moran interjects at last. Jim shifts his attention over and raises a single eyebrow. “Once it's safe for you to let go. You’ll just wait a moment and see what happens?”

Jim grins but he doesn't reply.

What happens is Johann’s body protests. She bucks up against the pressure despite her best efforts at stillness, twists and shoves and writhes to get free, but the efforts die down quickly, much faster than her strength would have as she soon regains control. The lack of movement is deliberate.

She's panting. One hand can’t help but come up to touch the fingers at her windpipe but it doesn't  _do_ anything, just pauses there, waits for her to calm down. Her hand falls safely out of the way, clenched in the fabric of her own dress instead.

Throughout this all, not a single thing has been done in her defense.

Jim squeezes a little and then loosens his grip a little more. A trickle of air goes in, a pant-like wheeze, and Johann’s facial expressions go a little wild. A little blurry. Moran's vision goes red.

The sniper storms into the room fully, going straight past Jim's right shoulder to the bed. The knife is still there on a pillow and it is picked up and tested against Moran's palm until a trail of blood appears. “Jim,” Moran pokes. And then again, louder, prods. The grip on the knife becomes threatening, whet by blood. “Boss. _Boss!_ You’re killing her!”

“No I’m not!” Jim loosens his hold again, and Johann's breath falls back into an even - if not easy - in and out cadence. “Kitten, please, calm down. If I were going to kill her, wouldn’t you at least expect her to struggle?”

He has a point, sick and perverted as it is. Johann’s vision has gone visibly unfocused and her body is writhing slowly in resultant agony, but she hasn’t lifted a finger against Jim this entire time. She is conscious but passive. _Allowing_ him to hurt her.

 _Did I teach her that?_ Moran wonders, filled with horror.  _I thought I taught her to fight back. No, I_ did. _I gave her that gun for a reason, so why the fuck isn't she using it?_

Jim obviously has the same idea. He takes one hand from her throat and uses it to unclench her fingers from the dress and curl it around the gun at their side. Without looking, she places it firmly back on the floor. Her palm goes flat against the carpet, not even allowing her nails to dig in.

“Someone obviously isn’t trying hard enough,” Jim croons, and at last he releases her.

Headrush overwhelms the girl. She coughs, once, but then swallows the rest of her gasps, grateful for even that. The panic that had been restrained comes freely at a frantic pace that the girl’s brain cannot handle, the active flow of oxygen once again new, heady. Light-headed, infirm in more ways than one, Johann melts into a pile to pant heavily at the man’s feet.

Slowly, deliberately, the knife is driven point-down into the mattress. Moran takes a deep breath in and holds it until the urge to break something lessens, although the desire never quite goes away. 

Jim takes a moment to breathe out all the bad thoughts and perhaps breathe in copious amounts of anger management drivel instead. Moran's shaky whisper of, "Fuck, you crazy sick fuck," goes absolutely unremarked. But when Jim gathers the trembling body into his arms protectively and stands, he holds her close and places a tender kiss to her temple.

“Big One,” he calls, high-pitched and demanding, like a pompous ass would call for a waiter. “Put our Little One to bed, won't you?”

“Little one big one what?” Moran asks, but there’s no hesitation in the silent stride. Jim has both arms around Johann’s fragile body and he lifts her princess style into Moran’s waiting grasp.

“It refers to relative size,” Jim teases playfully. Then he relents with a bashful blush. “My live-ins, of course. Go on now," he chides, as if they were naughty school children, "off to bed!”

No one stops him from leaving. It is like a physical weight has been lifted, and Moran's shoulders straighten as the sniper pulls Johann closer and puts lips to her temple, erasing the kiss Jim had left there a moment ago. They're both panting, but Moran's is a little more frantic.

"Too close," is the fiercely protective whisper in her hair, and Johann hugs Moran tightly in return, comforting the soldier as much as she can. "Fuck, little bit. No. Just _no._ That was too close."

Johann nods but doesn't say a word. The door is still wide open.

 

¥


End file.
